“On some days, days that his wife thinks are bad but which perhaps are good, my friend the Colonel is quite convinced that he is back here,” said the Major.

“So he dreams himself the life he cannot have?”

“Exactly. But we, who can do anything, we refuse to live our dreams on the basis that they are not practical. So tell me, who is to be pitied more?”

“There are real-life complications,” she said, laughing. “Can you imagine if the whole world decided tomorrow to move to a fishing lodge in the English countryside?”

“It’s Wales, actually,” said the Major. “And they do get a bit funny if there are too many visitors.”

He gave her the nicer of his two pairs of pajamas, navy cotton piped in white, as well as his camel robe and a pair of wool socks for her feet. He was glad he had packed the extra set after all. Nancy had often chided him for what she called his meticulous overpacking and his insistence on carrying a hard-sided leather bag for all trips. He couldn’t abide today’s travelers with their huge squashy duffel bags crammed with athletic shoes, balled-up tracksuits, and stretchy multipurpose trousers and dresses made out of special travel fabrics, with hidden pockets, which they wore indiscriminately to theaters and nice restaurants.

From a separate compartment, packed in an oilcloth bag that had belonged to his father, the Major produced a leather wash kit and, with some embarrassment at the intimacy, laid out soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and a small Egyptian cotton towel he always carried for emergencies.

“I’ll just run out to the car,” he said. “I have an extra toothbrush in my breakdown kit.”

“Along with a small barrel of brandy and a spare Shakespeare?” she asked.

“You’re laughing at me,” he said. “But if I didn’t have a blanket in the car I’d be pretty cold tonight on that couch.” He thought she blushed, but it might have been the candle flickering on her skin.

When he returned she was dressed in his pajamas and robe and was combing out her hair with his small, inadequate comb. The wool socks flopped around her slender ankles. The Major felt his breath falter and a new tension vibrate through his limbs.

“It’s a very uncomfortable couch,” she said. Her eyes were dark in the lamplight and as she raised her arms to flip her hair back, he was aware of the curves of her body against the smooth cotton of the borrowed pajamas and the soft robe. “I’m not sure you’ll be warm enough.” The Major felt it was vital to nod, and not to let his jaw fall open while he did so.

“Toothbrush,” he said with difficulty. He held it out by the very tip of the handle because he knew it was important, if he was to keep his composure, that her fingertips not touch his. “Lucky thing the blanket is cashmere. I’ll be perfectly comfortable.”

“You must at least take back your robe.” She stood and slid the robe off her shoulders and the Major found this so sensual that he dug his fingertips into his palms to keep the heat from rising in his face and body.

“Very kind of you.” Panic threatened to overwhelm him just from being close to her. He backed away toward the bedroom and the tiny bathroom beyond. “I’d better say good night now, just in case you’re asleep.”

“It’s so beautiful I’d like to lie awake and watch the moon on the water all night,” she said, advancing on the bedroom.

“Much better to get some rest,” he said. He stumbled away from her, found the bathroom door with some effort, and clawed his way in. He wondered just how long he might have to hide out in the bathroom pretending to wash before she would be safely asleep. For a moment, he wished he had brought something to read.

The soap and water revived him and also made him feel foolish. Once again, he had allowed his fears, and in this case, perhaps his fancies, to overwhelm his more rational self. Mrs. Ali was no different from any other woman, he reminded himself, and in a low whisper he lectured the face in the dim mirror. “She’s deserving of protection and respect. At your age you should be perfectly able to share a small cottage with a member of the opposite sex without getting all carried away like a pimply teenager.” He frowned at his face and ran a hand through his hair, which stuck up like a stiff brush and needed cutting. He decided to make an appointment with the barber when they got back. After a final deep breath, he resolved to march through to the sitting room, uttering a cheery good night as he went, and to allow no more nonsense from himself.

As he walked out into the small bedroom, carrying the lamp, she was sitting up in bed with her knees hugged to her chest and her chin dropped onto them. Her hair spilled around her shoulders and she seemed very young, or perhaps just very vulnerable. When she looked up at him, he could see her eyes shining at him.

“I was thinking about being practical,” she said. “Thinking of how everything is uncertain once we get back to the world.”

“Do we have to think of that?” he asked.

“So I was wondering whether it might be best if you just made love to me now, here, while we’re enjoying this particular dream,” she said. She looked at him with a steady gaze and he found he felt no need to look away. He was grateful to feel a flush of excitement rush through his body like a full tide over flat sand and he saw his ache for her echoed in the high color of her cheeks. There was no panic or fluster in his mind now. He would not diminish her declaration by asking her if she was sure. He merely hung the lamp on a hook in the beamed ceiling and went down on his knees at the bedside to take both her hands in his and kiss them, backs and palms. As he lifted his face to hers and as her hair swung around them like a dark waterfall, he found words suddenly irrelevant and so he said nothing at all.

In the early morning, he stood with a foot raised on a smooth granite boulder by the empty lake and watched the sun dazzle on the frosted reeds and melt the lace of ice on the muddy edge. It was bitterly cold, but he felt the sear of air in his nose as something exquisite and he lifted his face to the sky to feel the warmth of the sun. The mountains across the lake wore capes of snow on their massive rocky shoulders and Mount Snowdon pierced the blue sky with its sharp white ridges. A lone bird, falcon or eagle, with fringed edges to its proud wings, glided high on the faintest of thermals, surveying its kingdom. He raised his own arms to the air, stretching with his fingertips, and wondered whether the bird’s heart was as full as his own as he braced his legs against an earth made new and young. He wondered whether this might be how the first man had felt; only he had always pictured the Garden of Eden as a warm, midsummer experience, ripe with peaches and the drone of wasps in the orchard. Today he felt more like man the pioneer, alone in the harsh beauty of a strange new land. He felt upright, vigorous. He welcomed the stiffness of muscle and the faint tiredness that follows exertion. A pleasant glow, deep in his gut, was all that remained of a night that seemed to have burned away the years from his back.